The Development of Modern Online Gaming Industry

Nowadays, online gaming is worth billions of dollars in worldwide revenue. Recent data suggests that, in 2017, online games are to bring their developers 35 billion dollars, which is an enviable sum even for large industries. For many online game players, it has become not only a form of entertainment, but also a certain lifestyle, and a way to identify themselves. Online games have grown to be international communities with a common interest and a common purpose.

Online Gaming’s Path to Success

The early-bird games that were played on a basis of electronic network date back to the 1970s. The video games saw a rise as early as in the 60s, and the first consoles, which could be exploited with the help of a TV set were being sold even earlier, but the 70s witnessed the crucial step towards multi-player games. Two factors contributed to that: the growing popularity of personal computers, which began to appear in many American households, and the demands of local restaurant businesses that tried to introduce the first multi-player games. The latter, however, were played on the same screen by all the players, at first.

In 1973, one of the American universities created PLATO Network Systems, a computer network designed for educational purposes, for which Empire (the first multiplayer network game) was developed. The same system helped introduce the first shooter game, which was simultaneously the first 3D graphics game – Spasim. However, the authentic revolution for online gaming came in the 90s, when LAN Networks, and later the Internet, allowed to play multiplayer games.

Initially, online games were shooter games from the first person that allowed for some online options, like deathmatch or fight on the arena. The first versions of Doomsday, Counterstrike, Halo, Call of Duty all belong to this category. Shortly after, real-time strategy games followed, which allowed players to engage globally on a much bigger scale: Starcraft, Age of Empires. With the introduction of broadband Internet access at the end of the 90s, massive many-player online games brought on a new page in online gaming, bringing in the era of role-play games and social games with the vast variety of possibilities we see today.

The online gamer communities changed throughout the path of the modern gaming history. From local networks of 20 players to vast MMORPG international communities with hundreds of thousands of players – online gaming has definitely had its social impact. Here are the findings, and some of them suggest that people tend to identify themselves as gamers and spend a considerable amount of resources (both time and money) on their characters, reputation and general advancement in the online gaming world. Online games came to be so vast that they started developing their own laws, unions and economies inside the game itself. These financial worlds are real and function by the real economic laws, and those laws sometimes lead the online worlds to stagnation, bankruptcy and crises.

As we can see, online gaming is a big business, as well as a social phenomenon. Their impact on the lives of people involved is estimated to get much bigger as technology develops and allows for new opportunities for game development.

Expy is the mascot for DungeonMastering.com and the real mastermind behind Expy Games. He likes to hoard treasure, terrorize neighbors, burn down villages, and tell white dragon jokes..

No matter how fearful the legends claim dragons are, they always end up being defeated in 5 rounds by adventuring parties they encounter. That’s what dragons are – experience points for the heroes in your Dungeons & Dragon party. And this mascot is no different, hence the name Expy.

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